New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Miranda July dreams up a con family in ‘Kajillionaire’
Miranda July doesn’t seem to have fair-weather fans. There are those who are obsessed. And there are those who don’t know who she is. There is no in between.
Even after acclaimed films like “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and “The Future,” the author and director is still grateful when someone knows her work. It’s why she took note when Dede Gardner, the Oscar-winning producer of “Moonlight” and “12 Years a Slave,” wrote her a “beautiful” and “poetic” letter about her novel “The First Bad Man.”
“That’s not your average Hollywood producer,” July said. “I was like, huh, I guess when I finish this script, that may be the first person I send it to.”
The script in question was “Kajillionaire,” a story about a family of grifters in Los Angeles. It came to her one morning when in a half-conscious state she saw three characters, two women with long hair and a man. She was careful to not fall back asleep and instead to write her idea down.
Soon enough Gardner was over at July’s house agreeing to make her film. It was, July said, the first time she didn’t have to spend any time looking for money.
Like July’s other films, “Kajillionaire” is utterly sincere, a little surreal and quietly crushing. And, of course, it’s wholly original. Opening Friday in select theaters, the film follows scammers Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa Dyne (Debra Winger) and their 26-year-old child Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) in their strange, cheap Los Angeles life, foraging the urban landscape for survival. The decaying office space they rent for sleeping is adjacent to a bubble factory that often spills over into their home. And their routines are upended when a local extrovert, Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), joins their odd clan.
“Kajillionaire” is July’s first film in almost 10 years and the first since she had a child in 2012 (her spouse is director Mike Mills). And it’s significant to her.
“I wanted to have made two movies (before I had a child) because I know a lot of women only make one movie and I wanted to at least have gotten to make two. There was a sense almost like you were going to die — not actually — but that you might never get to continue being the person you were before. It’s so crazy because what man has ever had that thought?” July said. “But it was all right.